The Nevada Poet Laureate
What is a Poet Laureate?
The role of the Nevada State Poet Laureate is to propagate the art of poetry and encourage literacy and learning throughout the state. In addition to making appearances and doing poetry readings throughout the state, the poet laureate undertakes a significant cultural project during his or her term. The project goal is to share and promote poetry through appearances, readings, workshops, and various media, engaging with underserved audiences and enriching their lives. The scope and budget are determined in collaboration with the Nevada Arts Council staff. The Nevada Arts Council oversees the Nevada State Poet Laureate selection process and submits qualified individuals to the governor, who makes the appointment. Shaun Griffin was appointed to this role on May 1, 2024, and will serve through April 30, 2026
Meet Shaun Griffin
Shaun Griffin has spent a lifetime working to build bridges where there are none for communities. During the mid-80s, he worked at Stanford University on its community outreach program, starting several disability initiatives on campus. He founded minority youth outreach programs at four Bay Area universities, was the co-founder and former director of Community Chest — a nonprofit agency serving children and families in northwestern Nevada — and was the founding director of the Nevada Office for Education of Homeless Children and Youth. For more than 30 years, Griffin has taught a poetry workshop at Northern Nevada Correctional Center, publishing a biennial journal of inmate work entitled, Razor Wire. His memoir about his journey to build community in rural Nevada, Anthem for a Burnished Land, came out in 2016.
Since the 1990s, Griffin has been expressing himself through painting, sculpting and writing. He regularly contributes poetry, essays, and translations to literary journals, and was editor-at-large at Calapooya and contributing editor at Weber Studies. He is the author of seven books of poetry, editor of two anthologies, three memoirs, a book of essays, and translator of a book of poems. In 1999, he started a poetry reading series to celebrate National Poetry Month at Reno’s Sundance Books and Music that lasted until the store’s closing in 2024. In 2019, he began a biweekly podcast, “A Writer’s World,” which has aired more than 120 episodes.
Griffin was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1995. In 2004, he received the Mike O’Callaghan Humanitarian Award, named after the former Nevada Governor, for all his impactful work. He was also awarded the Rosemary McMillan Lifetime Achievement in Art Award in 2006 by Sierra Arts Foundation and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2014.
Contact The Poet Laureate
Words
Would that any word wake America from its slumber,
I would surrender all hope of writing another poem
And join hands in its offering.
By Shaun Griffin
Shaun Griffin’s Project
During Shaun’s two-year tenure as Nevada State Poet Laureate his project focus will be to start a creative writing workshop in every Nevada prison like the Razor Wire poetry workshop he has led at Northern Nevada Correctional Center since 1989. Toward this end, he works with the Nevada Prison Education Project (NPEC), a program he helped found in 2021. While NPEC’s stated goal is to bring higher education and the arts and humanities inside state prisons, it does far more. For many participants, it has saved their lives, given them voice and purpose, skills and confidence, an interest in reading, and a desire to shape their story in words.
Shaun and the NPEP team of volunteers advocate for change to improve literacy and lower recidivism for the justice-impacted community. NPEC works closely with the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC), the Nevada System of Higher Education, several nonprofits, and volunteers/justice-impacted persons to effect this change.
“Nothing is so fragile as a poem and yet, paradoxically, nothing is so strong. In these thirty years it has broken bars, set men free, and taught non-readers how to move in the forest of language. More than all of this, it has given purchase to an idea: that with labor born of love something greater than violence and hatred can arise from the depths of the yard — the birth of a poem, an interest in reading, a desire to shape one’s story in words, and a reckoning with the self that had little hope of being reckoned with.”
Shaun Griffin on the Razor Wire Poetry Workshop
The Impact of the Razor Wire Poetry Workshop
“Books helped me experience things in life that I missed out on coming to prison at such a young age. Books taught me that insight is greater than eyesight; that my decisions become easier when my desire to please my family is stronger than my desire to please myself; that the people closest to the solution are those closest to the problem; that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell; that the only thing that gets in the way of my learning is my education. Books allowed me to understand how small acts of kindness will be remembered for a lifetime. Books help prevent sadness and depression. Books mean life.”
– B.B.
“I was a teenager when I came to prison. I had no education—and no life experience. I was angry and violent and that led to many years in solitary confinement. No television or phone. No window. Just books.
I became a voracious reader. Thousands of books. They taught me about this world and about myself. They changed my perspective. I became the man that I was supposed to be in large part due to my exposure to books.
After more than two-and-a-half decades in prison and with no end in sight, I am free. In my mind and in my soul, I am free. Books taught me the impossibility of imprisonment.”
– J.G.
Radio show
“A Writer’s World with Shaun Griffin”
Airs every other Sunday at 5 p.m. on KWNK, 97.7 FM. You also can listen on kwnkradio.org (A Writer’s World) or wherever you get your podcasts.
Upcoming Poet Laureate Events
2025 Nevada Poetry Out Loud Finals
Joe Crowley Student Union Theatre - University of Nevada, Reno 1664 N. Virginia St., Reno, United StatesSupport local high schools semi-finalists for the 20th annual Nevada Poetry Out Loud state competition on March 15. Witness the fierce competition between students from across the state as they vie for the esteemed state title. Following this, the Nevada state finalist will have the incredible opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., to contend in […]
Booking request form
Nevada State Poet Laureate Appearance Request
Nevada State Poet Laureate Shaun Griffin is available for speaking engagements statewide during his two-year term (appearances subject to availability and funding).
Venues include literary festivals; book clubs; bookstores; grade schools, high schools, and universities; libraries and museums; writing conferences and workshops; veterans’ events; senior centers; and conducting interviews on television, radio, and other media outlets.
Appearance requests are considered by the laureate in consultation with the Nevada Arts Council. Please use this form to invite the Nevada Poet Laureate to your event. Allow two to three business days for review.
Invite the Poet Laureate
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